For many years, yield was vital to college rankings. Universities tried not only to attract far more qualified applicants than they could possibly admit, they also tried to get a very high yield. From the point of view of applicants, this was, well, a bit devilish. The universities, of course, have a different point of view, and it’s worth considering their perspective as you begin the process of applying.

For those of you who are not up on the inside game of college admissions and its terminology (yet), yield is the number of admitted students who then also actually enrollin the school instead of, say, turning down the school to enroll in their “other” first choice. Yield was for many years important due to the U.S. News and World Report’s use of yield in its rankings of colleges, a practice they gave up years back. But yield remains, as a kind of ghost hanging around the theatre of college applications, influencing the general perception about how in demand a college is. The psychology is not so dissimilar to that of the fashion industry in some ways, if you step back and squint your eyes a bit—or maybe not. Too scary to visualize.

In any case, universities today still share their yield info with applicants; those universities with high yields share the information as a sales point (simply everybody, or at least a supermajority of our admits wants to go to our school, etc.) and the others share presumably either so they won’t seem like they have something to hide or because they really are perfectly fine accepting students who were ranked in a top decile but who were not in the tiny cohort of the top 1 to 3% of those who actually gain admissions to an elite Ivy or Stanford.

As a side note, for those of you who are already feeling the butterflies as you consider the odds of getting into, say, Princeton or Stanford, look: You will find a surprising number of really excellent schools that accept the top 10-15% of students, and many people in fact get a great education for less debt at public schools with even “lower” standards. Some of these less competitive schools have specific programs that compete with anybody. Once you look beyond the same 10-15 schools that everybody else knows about and wants to apply to, you can find all kinds of hidden gems. So breathe deep and relax as I present the admissions facts as they are, and I will, in upcoming posts, also help you look outside the envelope everybody else is staring into, including looking at cheaper and less well-known but still excellent domestic options, as well as looking outside the country. If you can expand your horizon beyond the same 12-15 schools everyone else is applying to, you can find some real gems, colleges that may suit you and your needs better than many marquee universities.

With this preamble, let’s first take a look at the data I gathered on some of the most competitive colleges in the United States—yes, these are some of the schools everybody has heard of:

Yale—2013 (class of 2017): Yield not available as of 6/19; 2012: 68.4%; 2011: 65.2%

Compare the yield rates for the elite schools, above, with the overall category averages below, which come from the most recent NACAC (National Association of College and Career Counselors) report, with data up through 2011; these are averages for the entire public/private categories:

Yield Rates for Public and Private 4-Year Colleges

Year

Public

Private

2002

51.4%

47.8%

2003

50.6%

45.7%

2004

49.1%

45.5%

2005

48.9%

44.2%

2006

47.5%

43.8%

2007

48.4%

44.2%

2008

46.2%

43.3%

2009

42.9%

38.4%

2010

42.9%

38.4%

2011

42.6%

36.4%

The story that my data on the super selective schools and the data in this categorical chart tells is clear: the most elite schools have been pretty well sheltered from the big drop in yields in recent years, but many others have been, therefore, disproportionately affected.

Why? Well, demand, largely. And the demand is driven by certain realities—the famous profs, the famous alums, the data they issue about how smart their applicants are, the data about how few of those applicants they let in, the data about how high their yield rate is of those they did admit . . . oh, wait, it looks like we are discussing, well, marketing, and therefore, Dear Applicant, we are discussing you. Or your perceptions both personally and aggregated with your peers across the country and world. Take your pick.

As you consider your own perceptions, we should also consider the plight of that demonic realm known as the Admissions Department. You might want to cue some Rolling Stones (Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste) as you think about those dark empires into which all your personal information will disappear, leaving you to wait for months to find out if you are one of the blessed or one of the damned when the envelopes are mailed or the e-mails sent next spring. But here’s the thing: they have problems, too.

You are in a race to be admitted; they are in a contest to improve their rankings, or if they are near the top, to maintain their position. Changes in college rankings mean big money and can make or break campuses and careers. In some cases, the suffering of admissions deans may even surpass that of those applying. A large part of a dean’s problem is hitting the sweet spot where most of those admitted actually attend. All heck can break loose if 400 extra freshmen admits appear who weren’t expected.

Yes, screwing up on your yield can wreak some serious havoc, with 18-year olds sleeping on cots in hallways, irate parents calling, news vans prowling campus. Worse even than that is a big drop in yield, when dorm rooms are empty because the admissions people didn’t get enough new faces to show up. Instead of simply bad PR, which they can deal with, they lose real money and their prestige takes a hit. That’s a scary, nay a terrifying thing for university administrators, even with the economy appearing to recover. Have a little compassion for those admissions types who are not really devils anyhow. They are your fellows in the suffering created by our crazy college applications market.

And here is one more thing to consider: You will do a better job at creating a strategy for college admissions if you better understand the problems facing your admissions officers, because you will also know more about your own challenges when you apply. And when you turn to writing your application essays, your audience should be one of your first considerations.

Of course, in the long run, the more of you who do a better job understanding those problems, the (paradoxically) larger problems those same admissions officers will face, at least in the long run. For one thing, you will follow my advice and continue to apply to more schools, and you will also continue to demonstrate more interest in more schools, using persistence and discipline to evade their attempts to measure just how committed you are as they, for their part, try to get more apps, admit fewer people and have a higher yield.

With that, let’s say the game is afoot, and may the best applicants win. Read my earlier post on how applications are evaluated while you start to plan your moves, and I will have more about all this strategy stuff in later posts. Speaking of which, some of these posts will be protected and you will need to pay me a very small subscription fee for full access to all my posts on my private blog. Contact me at wordguild@gmail.com for more information. See you soon.

In addition to working as an editor and college advisor, I have taught at the high school and college levels, including twenty years of experience in Advanced Placement English Literature, which was where I first began helping students with admissions to elite universities. After working with applications officials at multiple universities, ... Continue reading →